


Mercy Kill

by shefrommo



Series: I'm no longer in Creative Writing classes, so I can post these now [3]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Original Work
Genre: Even the tiniest mouse will bite back when cornered, Gen, I refuse to tag Elle/Enyo, In her dreams, Originally written on 1/30/20, Stalkers are no fun, Writing excercise for a Creative Writing class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shefrommo/pseuds/shefrommo
Summary: Elle has spent millennia running. So when she finds out that Enyo is still alive, she decides that she's had enough. The Romans were a bloodthirsty lot, and they've taught her a thing or two about standing her ground.Original prompts: stealth flashback and something in the water.
Series: I'm no longer in Creative Writing classes, so I can post these now [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800808
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Mercy Kill

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy!

Elle drifted through the rubble, stepping carefully over the torn earth. She was barefoot, and the ground was rocky; sharp pebbles were as much a danger as were the shards of glass strewn about where someone had tossed away a bottle and it had shattered upon the ground.

It was not a windy day in Athens, but Elle fancied that she could hear it sighing as it passes through the half-crumbled pillars. This place had been a temple once, grand and austere, quiet and reverent. Now it was abandoned, a shattered wreck of itself, debris and litter its only offerings from the populace. No longer did a crowd of worshippers travel from all over the known-world to see its priestesses and their lady-goddess. The only visitors this temple had now were irreverent trespassers with no care for the holy ground they tread upon.

Elle stopped at a pool, which was once a bath to wash away the impurities of suppliants, and peered down into it. Somewhere in the depths, something streaked with gold glinted up at her. It looked like a skull. Elle stared at it silently, judgmentally. A better person might have been alarmed by the sight of human remains and reported it to the local authorities, but it wasn’t like Elle cared enough to tell anyone. She was the one to put Enyo there, after all.

It had been a long time since they’d last seen each other. Or, at least, it had been a long time since Elle had last seen Enyo. She had half-hoped the other woman was dead. So many were and had been for a long time. Everyone knew that the Age of Gods and Heroes was over.

Elle—Eleos—was the goddess of pity and mercy, and so minor a goddess that even during when her cult had existed, few had known who she was. Unlike the Olympians, she had long learned to live on what few scraps of power she received from humans showing mercy, from them pitying others.

Perhaps because of that, many minor gods and goddesses had survived. Elle had dared to hope that Enyo was not one of that many, but it was apparent that she had not been so lucky. For a moment, Elle debated turning around and leaving, pretending that she hadn’t seen the war goddess sitting in Elle’s favorite coffee shop, in her favorite seat, reading her favorite book.

But no. Elle had, over the intervening centuries, and after the Romans had adopted her, finally grown a spine. It was long past time that she dealt with her divine stalker.

Elle sat down across from Enyo, and the goddess of destruction didn’t even have the courtesy to pretend she hadn’t been waiting for her, that this wasn’t a meeting she had engineered. Enyo set down her book and smiled at Elle. There was no warmth in the expression, just a chilling sort of greed.

“I see you’ve finally decided to stop by and visit me, little hummingbird,” Enyo said.

“I decided it was time to stop running,” Elle replied, and tried to hide the trembling of her hands by folding them into fists. Judging by the way Enyo’s gaze flitted down to track the motion, then slid slowly back to Elle’s face, the shaking hadn’t escaped her notice.

“Oh, dear heart,” Enyo said, and reached out to take one of Elle’s hands, “there’s no reason to run from me. I just want to have coffee with you, and perhaps chat about this book I’m reading. You like it too, don’t you?”

Elle stayed perfectly still as Enyo pried her fist apart finger by finger, and then interlaced their hands. Finally, she said stiffly, “If I agree to a date with you, at a place of my choosing, will you leave me alone?”

Surprise, then victory flashed through Enyo’s eyes. “Of course,” she purred, “where do you want to go together, my dear, sweet, little Eleos?”

Elle swallowed hard, then said, “To my temple. Nobody goes there anymore, but I’ll feel safer in my own home.”

“Oh, honey, there’s no reason to be afraid of me.”

 _Yes, there is,_ Elle thought, and let the thought show on her expression.

The trek to Elle’s temple was awkward, Elle repressing the urge to shudder as Enyo wound an arm around the small of her back and guided her.

“Oh, look at it,” Enyo murmured, staring up at the carcass of Elle’s once resplendent temple. “How piteous it is now. What do you want to do together, darling? Shall we fix it up? I’m certain I can find a place for an altar in here—and while we’re remodeling, we can add a few armories. My temples are never quite complete without weapons and rooms to hold them in.”

“I have a better idea,” Elle said and tried very hard not to think about how Enyo wanted to violate Elle’s temple, Elle’s _sanctuary_ , with her tools of war and cruelty.

“Do tell, pet,” Enyo murmured in her ear.

“There was an old bath, built for my suppliants to wash away their impurities,” Elle explained, leaning away from Enyo, “its still intact, and while it won’t have any water in it right now, this is still the center of my power. I can change that easily.”

“Oh, you want to go swimming together!” Enyo said, delighted. “If I’d known that I’d get to see you in a bikini, I would have brought a camera.” She leered at Elle, “Or where you planning on going skinny dipping? We don’t have any bathing suits, after all.”

“I thought we could dip our feet in the water, actually,” Elle said, and hated how small her voice sounded.

“I think I prefer my idea better,” Enyo mused.

When they got to the edge of the pool, Elle timidly asked her to pick out some of the debris from the bottom of it. It was dangerous to step foot in there as it was, and Elle needed to focus in order to muster enough power to fill the bath.

“Of course,” Enyo said, “we wouldn’t want you to hurt those delicate little feet, after all.”

She stepped into the pool and made a show of bending downwards to grab stuff from the bottom of the pool. Elle stripped off her shoes, walked closer, and folded her hands together. Enyo hadn’t moved more than one or two things from the bottom of the bath when it abruptly flooded with water, with her still in it.

“Darling!” Enyo exclaimed, turning to face Elle, “that worked quicker than I anticipated, but did you need to soak me in the process?”

“Yes,” Elle said simply, and tackled her into the water.

Enyo’s eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth to say something—probably, if Elle had to guess, about how eager Elle was to get her wet—but before the words could leave her mouth, Elle wrapped her hands around Enyo’s throat and squeezed.

A goddess’s temple was not only the center of their worship, but the seat of their power, and even ruined and forgotten as it was, Elle’s temple was still the core of where her power rested. Enyo might have been the goddess of war and destruction, but they were equally starved of power and worship, so in her own home, Elle was stronger.

Enyo thrashed and thrashed, and tried to rip Elle’s hands off, but Elle held on as tight as she could, and forced Enyo’s head underwater. When the other goddess finally went limp beneath her, Elle didn’t let go, assuming it was a ploy to get her to release her grip. Instead, she gathered up her power, and smote the other goddess from being, leaving behind only a charred corpse behind.

Elle let go and stood up, shaking her hands to clean them of the golden ichor that had seeped out of the corpse’s skin. As she watched, the flesh flaked away in the pool’s water, disintegrating until naught but a faintly gold-streaked skeleton was left behind.

Then she turned and walked out of the bath, looking for a marble block small enough that she could lift it. When she returned, the skull glittered at her from its position on the bottom of the pool. Elle set her rock down, dragged the skeleton out, bone by bone, and ground each one to dust with the marble block.

When only the skull remained, and Elle had pulled it out of the water, she turned it over in her hand for a moment. “You know,” she said aloud to no one, “you’d think that the goddess of bloodlust would be a bit better at noticing when someone wanted to kill her. Even if it was me.” Elle considered her own words for a moment, as she started destroying the skull. “Perhaps,” she mused finally, “especially if it was me. There’s a reason the term ‘mercy kill’ exists after all, and after literal millennia of dealing with her, I think I’m rather due some mercy and a permanent respite from her attentions.”


End file.
